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Support Class (XCOM: Enemy Unknown)
The Support Class is one of the Soldier Classes in the game XCOM: Enemy Unknown. The primary role of the support class is to keep the team alive and / or provide covering fire. They can learn to use Medikits more efficiently, to cover the battlefield with smoke grenades and the ability to run further than other classes. Their covering fire and suppression abilities can help control enemy movement on the battlefield. Rookie promotion is slightly weighted toward classes you have less of, but promotion is otherwise completely random. XCOM Database Soldiers trained in the support class serve as both field medics and logistical support to the squad they are attached to. Equipped with medical supplies, smoke grenades and other items, these troops ensure the safe return of all units deployed in the field. Weapons The Support Class can be equipped with Rifles and Pistols. Abilities When a soldier is promoted, certain ranks give the player the option to choose 1 from the 2 available abilities to give to their soldier. Builds and Tactics The support can be built as a medic (favoring left side) or as front line suppressor (right side). * Sprinter is highly effective for gaining strong positioning, gaining flanks and full cover when others would come up short. It aids in entering melee for use of the Arc Thrower, making the Support the ideal choice for capturing live aliens. It also allows a Support equipped with a Medikit to rapidly cover ground to stabilize the fallen and wounded. Later with Deep Pockets, a Support can equip both a Medikit and an Arc Thrower allowing you to do both in every mission, further maximizing the benefits from the Sprinter perk. An essential promotion. * Covering Fire is of questionable use. It has notable synergy with Rifle Suppression, allowing reactive fire against a target who fires while suppressed, and the Colonel upgrade Sentinel, widening the likelyhood that you'll get two shots per Overwatch in an engagement. All that said, however, it does not trigger until after they fire. At higher difficulties, you will generally hunker down with an alien in sight and only Overwatch after a short retreat, forcing the alien to move up and be fired on reactively as they are exposed, before they fire. This strategy is greatly superior to covering fire as you'll shoot first and often kill the would-be aggressor. As such, this promotion is rarely influential. Certain enemies will still fire when flanked/exposed and held in overwatch, especially if the reactive fire would not be fatal. Covering fire can be nice for returning fire at these targets. In the early game, you won't have access to Rifle Suppression, essential to making this promotion worthwhile. In the mid game, you won't have Sentinel, though Covering Fire will be effective with suppress at keeping an exposed/flanked target in place for a turn longer and shooting at it too, provided they don't have special abilities to use (You can suppress the long range targets to lower the grenade spam somewhat). In the late game, you'll have the full combo, but the support's inferior weaponry makes his reactive fire of mediocre value at this point. * Field Medic is one of the best overall upgrades for the class. Three heals allows liberal use of the Medikit and means you can keep the squad topped off between firefights. If soldiers fall, you have three possible stabilizations, which can avert disaster. Once you have a Sergeant Support, seriously consider the Medikit Foundry upgrade against other expenses. * Smoke and Mirrors can suit a movement minimalism grand strategy, where your squad tends to get into a lot of long range shootouts against small numbers of enemy troops. These Squads generally have 2 heavies for breaking cover and shivs for suppression, and rely on a beeline to Drone Capture] and S.H.I.V. Repair. The smoke protects the S.H.I.V.s as they absorb enemy fire, and the support (and others) carry an arc thrower. However, while this is viable at all difficulties, the Dual Squadsight sniper carry Grand Strategy is traditionally regarded as superior. Given the strength of Snipers at ending standoffs quickly, the tendency of aliens to grenade and poison in the midgame, and the long range grenades and psionics late game, the niche for Smoke and Mirrors is quite small. But there are a select few times, notably when your promoted snipers were lost, where it can be a strong pick. * Revive is quite strong, able to get the critically wounded back into the fight and keeping more men on the field and firing at the enemy. It has strong synergy with the officer training "Don't Die On Me" that makes it more likely that highly promoted troops fall critically wounded instead of being killed. Revive won't see much use, but when it does, it can salvage a mission that has gone horribly wrong and turn a total party wipeout into victory, and at your worst allow you to get wheels up with more of your top personnel on board. * Rifle Suppression will see frequent use, and will be moderately effective at keeping fire off your squad. The Support has weak offensive options, unlike the Heavy, who shouldn't waste turns suppressing. On Impossible difficulty, you'll need two suppress effects on a target to disable that combatant's weapon fire against your troops. This promotion is powerful for neutering Sectopods, who fire twice per turn, and with 2 suppressions, both will always miss against targets in cover. Both Revive and Rifle Suppression are worthwhile and it is unclear which is better, though in general Revive may have a slight edge. A movement minimalism grand strategy will want the extra suppression. * Dense Smoke increases the core functionality of smoke grenades and tends to be more useful than Combat Drugs. The 40 total bonus defense Dense Smoke adds to exposed allies can save them from critical fire. Also, when used on allies in high cover, you can force aliens to use abilties, advance, or waste a turn, as 80 defense is almost impenetrable. Essentially, all allies are hunkered down in full cover, except they still have their full turn. Even on impossible difficulty, enemies will be hard pressed to land a single shot on you. The increased area of effect on Dense Smoke helps for keeping your troops spread out to minimize the effects of enemy grenades, an attractive counter to the smoke cover you just put up. * Combat Drugs do many things, but nothing particularly well. The critical chance gain is marginal and the Will bonus tends to not impact psionic encounters more than simply having an extra turn to shoot them in the brains. It is worth noting here that Combat Drugs adds +10 aim to attackers in the smoke as well, despite this not being listed on the talent itself. This can be relevant in a standoffish type encounter, 10 aim and crit on two HEAT ammo shots can be more useful against cyberdiscs/sectopods than a shot from a support's inferior weaponry, same goes for a double shotgun blast, double tap, or In The Zone spree. The 10 aim and crit can add reliability to some 90% hit/crit situations, but generally the gains of Combat Drugs are so small it is rarely worthwhile solely for offensive use. The offensive boosts are nice, but when the smoke is needed defensively as well, this promotion shines. That rarely happens, making this merely an interesting alternative to Dense Smoke, but not a stronger one. * Savior is a strong final pick. With Field Medic you'll have three heals for 8 hp or 10 hp with the Foundry upgrade. Before the Medikit upgrade this doubles Medikit value, and after increases it 66%. Savior is a significant, reliable increase to the core strength of the class, and like Field Medic, is hard to pass up. * Sentinel allows two Overwatch shots in a turn. Covering Fire and Sentinel work well together as stated before. Sentinel is of questionable use as it doesn't trigger twice on packs waking up, the support weapon loadout is the weakest in game, and the second Overwatch rarely triggers without leaving your Support intentionally exposed. At this point in the game other squadmates do significantly more damage with their specialized weaponry and critical hit bonuses. You are better off keeping everyone propped up with Savior and leaving the killing to the rest. Multiplayer Support Classes The following is a detailed break-down of the support class stats and abilities in multiplayer mode. Note: Each soldier class has a base cost of 800 points, which would need to be added to the values above to determine the point value of a particular soldier. The above point and stat values reflect the default (i.e. 0 point) equipment load-out. Category:Soldier Classes